344 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



agricultural depression has been the draining away of 

 tenants' capital in paying rents, which it was impossible to 

 pay fairly out of the produce of the land, and at the same 

 time to pay adequately for labour, manuring, and the ex- 

 penditure essential to the proper maintenance of agri- 

 cultural condition. 



I would once more draw attention to the paragraph in the 

 Eichmond Commission Report, which thus sums up the 

 subject of rent : — 



" While we strongly object to any legislative interference 

 with arrangements on the question of rent between landlord 

 and tenant, we are of opinion that it will be for the interest 

 of both parties that rent should be so fixed by voluntary 

 agreement as to enable farmers to meet the difficulties of 

 their position." 



In his Supplementary Report to the Richmond Commis- 

 sion, our colleague, Mr Clay, said : — 



" A readjustment of rent is most urgently required by the 

 large majority of farmers in the country, and it is for the in- 

 terests not less of landlords than of tenants that a readjust- 

 ment should take place at once to meet the altered circum- 

 stances with which farmers have now to contend. The 

 report, in my opinion, should distinctly recommend full re- 

 adjustment of rent for the adoption of the landlords. An 

 abatement of rent for one or two years will not meet the 

 difficulty, or allow tenants to recoup themselves and do 

 justice to the land; what is required is a permanent re- 

 duction of rent to give tenants some hope of regaining their 

 lost capital, and an impetus to increase the fertility of their 

 farms by the continued high cultivation of the land. . . . 

 Evidence has been given that rents have been unduly forced 

 up by class laws, false and inflated competition, also by the 

 letting of farms by tender, and screwing out of tenants more 

 than what could be honestly paid from the produce of the 

 soil." 



I hold that the evidence taken in our own inquiry shows 

 that neither in point of time nor in degree, have rents been 

 reduced in anything like fair proportion to the heavy and 

 progressive fall of prices, and that therefore it is clear that 

 over-renting has been to an even greater extent an operative 

 cause in the disasters of agriculture in the last few years 

 than it was at the period of the Richmond Commission. 



It seems to me scarcely reasonable to treat the question 



